The Faint

Before The Faint could build anything, the band had to demolish a few things. The Omaha quintet has always been perceived as a series of paradoxes: Nebraskans trafficking in electro-pop anthems; a five-person outfit who insist on songwriting democracy; punk rockers laying down their guitars for a decidedly untypical kind of punk rock. They've contended with external expectations and lazy classifications, a four-year-break since their last album, Wet From Birth, and the task of converting their fascinations into songs, all while sloughing off past layers that didn't quite fit. With Fasciinatiion, The Faint's fifth album, the band gives the world the realest representation of themselves to date, but in doing so, walls were literally and figuratively taken down. It also just so happens that the purest album the band has made is also their best; written, recorded, produced, art directed and released entirely on their own via their newly-formed label, blank.wav, Fasciinatiion is imbued equally with the musical instincts and perspectives of each band member. "It's all The Faint," lead singer Todd Fink (nee Baechle) explains. "There's no outside anything. It's exactly what five people in The Faint could agree on. Or come close."

Those five people (lead singer Fink, Fink's brother drummer Clark Baechle, bassist/guitarist Joel Petersen, guitarist/bassist Dapose and Jacob Thiele, who plays synthesizers) first came together in fewer numbers and under the name Norman Bailer, a "lite rock" band formed with future indie superstar Conor Oberst. After Oberst's departure, and the realization that the genre didn't quite fit who they were, the Baechle brothers and Petersen released Media, a foray into guitar-heavy indie rock, under the name The Faint in 1998. It wasn't until 1999's Blank-Wave Arcade, however, that the band found their sound: In place of guitars, they added synthesizers, and the effect was revelatory. Says Todd, "From our point of view, synthesizers seemed to have a limitless and almost magical quality to them; magical in the sense that you could create a keyboard sound out of almost nothing, and have it perfectly fit your musical disposition." Thiele joined the band, and with the line-up further cemented, they began to hone their live shows - part-rave, part-gallery affairs - that had audiences drenched in sweat. With 2001's Danse Macabre, the band ventured further into the world of dance music, and the missing member of the band came in the form of Dapose, a death metal guitarist and visual artist who helped to craft their visceral, beat-heavy songs detailing everyday malaise and job despondency. The album was immediately embraced by hundreds of thousands of kids around the world who longed for a record to which they could both relate and dance, and not long after, a remix album, Danse Macabre Remixes, followed. By the time the band released 2004's critically-lauded Wet From Birth, an album best marked by its sonic expansion of The Faint's signature sound, the band's shows were legendary and their musical prowess perfected.

After touring tirelessly throughout the world on the heels of Wet From Birth, the band returned to their native Omaha to find that the Orifice, their one-time HQ for all things Faint (recording studio, visual art studio, etc.), no longer fit. They took a lengthy, much-needed break, and then went to work on one of their largest projects to date: renovating a building, creating a studio and recording their new album there. "It didn't go all that well for a while. It's always hard for us to write music that we all like, and [at the beginning] we were out of practice," explains Joel Petersen.

With the paint hardly dry on the walls of Enamel, the new Faint complex, the band made another major decision: Rather than have their new album produced by someone outside of the band, all five Faint members would produce it, with Joel Petersen acting as chief engineer. "I think on the last record, we kind of felt a little weird about it," Petersen says of Wet From Birth. "Like maybe it didn't end up feeling like our record so much." That decision, however, carried with it moments of anxiety in the studio, as the band had never tried to produce their own albums before. "We knew we could make a great sounding record, but there were times when a song just wasn't coming together - when it didn't ring true. So we just took another whack at it. A bunch of songs were overhauled like this while others came together very quickly," Fink explains of the process. These overhauls provided the songs with a lean yet layered quality, and allowed for the band to explore several musical avenues. In addition to the band's desire to record a musical distillation of themselves, The Faint also aimed to retain their pop sensibilities while pushing themselves thematically and instrumentally into the future; the songs on Fasciinatiion, while engaged with the present world, are forward-looking. "In the past five years I've become more and more fascinated with everything. I also went on quite a future hunt," Fink says. "I was reading futurists and philosophies about the way things will be," Fink explains of the scenarios enumerated in a song on the album called "The Geeks Were Right." In a similar vain, "Machine in the Ghost" is a warm, halting song that builds into Fink half-shouting, half-positing questions to all those who've claimed to have the key to existence (to name a few: acidheads, mathematicians, the Pope). The theme of the unknown ahead is also seen on album closer "A Battle Hymn For Children," a gorgeously swooning ballad sung from a child's perspective that turns chillingly angry. The song, which cleaved the band in terms of its inclusion, ended up on the record because of that anger and conviction. "That song was quite possibly the most lyrically expressive out of the whole batch of songs. My main interest is, 'I can tell you mean everything you're saying, and it gives me goose bumps,'" Petersen says.

The album's title gives the best representation of its contents. The product of a keyboard with a broken i-key and the strictures of iTunes, it's an apt title for a record made in the spirit of the awe the universe inspires, with several eyes on it. "It's an extension of all of us," says Petersen. "I think what keeps us going in general is that we want to surprise ourselves. It's the quest for that that keeps us moving."

Omaha, NE's the Faint have gone through countless changes in their relatively short career, but with each shift, both in terms of personnel and style, they have made a distinct new impression and turned more and more heads. Originally called Norman Bailer and featuring current members Clark and Todd Baechle (later he changed his name to Todd Fink, after marrying future Saddle Creek recording artist Orenda Fink of Azure Ray), as well as bassist Joel Peterson, the group's early years were a mix of lo-fi pop and tongue-in-cheek easy listening with a touch of punk rock ideals borrowed from their early skateboarding days. Along with a prepubescent Bright Eyes and a recently formed Cursive, the band was one of the seeds that spawned the explosive Omaha scene as well as a flagship act for the highly regarded Saddle Creek Records.

A very limited cassette release and a few tracks on split 7"s and samplers were the band's only output, but the spark was there, and after adding Matt Bowen to the mix, the Faint proper first came into being around 1998. Media, the group's first full-length, was still a far cry from their later sounds, but the record was a fitting introduction to the band that featured a bevy of conflicting sounds, from new wave-inspired pop to Lullaby for the Working Class-style acoustic dirges. It wasn't the perfect record, but it was an inspired start that gave the band a good idea of what they were, and more importantly were not, striving for. In the wake of Media, the band set out to add something special to their live show, and in the course of the year, Bowen left the band and Jacob Thiele joined up to add the all-too-important keyboard sounds into the mix.

Early 1999 saw the band re-enter the studio with a new agenda, focusing on danceable beats, catchy keyboards, and an '80s-influenced sound that both revered and reinvented the past. The result was Blank-Wave Arcade (Saddle Creek), a pulsating record about sexuality, transportation, and mass consumption that instantly attracted hordes of new fans who were blown away by the group's distinctive new sound. The new material, along with a seizure-inducing D.I.Y. live light show and incorrigible on-stage energy, created a major buzz, and soon the Faint were revered as the second coming of new wave genius. A series of remixes on both a limited-edition LP and a tour to support a CD from Insound furthered the hype, and by the time the Faint entered the studio yet again in early 2001, the buzz had grown to a resounding roar.

In August of 2001, the group released its third LP, Danse Macabre (Saddle Creek), a somewhat darker exploration of the styles hinted at on Blank-Wave Arcade. They also added a guitarist by the name of Dapose (born Mike Dappen), whose death metal past worked perfectly with the gloomy, but still oddly upbeat, sentiments of the new record. The disc was released to instant acclaim and almost immediately became one of the label's best-selling titles. The Faint followed it up with even more touring and also found the time to release the Mote/Dust 12" (GSL) in October of 2001, featuring two more remixes, a Sonic Youth cover, and a new track featuring Bright Eyes songsmith Conor Oberst. The band was all quiet on the recording front until March of 2003, when they released an album of remixes from Danse Macabre called, strangely enough, Danse Macabre Remixes. The disc featured remixes by artists like Paul Oakenfold, Photek, and Medicine. They followed this up with Wet from Birth, which was released in fall 2004. The band remixed "Meet Your Master" from Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero, while bassist Joel Peterson reworked Of Montreal's "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" under his Broken Spindles alias. The Faint built their own studio, named Enamel, and formed their own label, Blank.Wav, on which they released their fourth album Fasciinatiion in summer 2008. ~ Peter J. D'Angelo, All Music Guide